Saturday, July 23, 2011

Today, 10 members of the Elgin Piecemakers got together at Heather's house to make 4 quilts for cancer patients at our local hospital--this is our ongoing charity project. We all made the same coins quilt pattern in 4 different colourways. Pat chose the fabrics and we worked in groups of 2 or 3 to put the quilts together.

I used my new Featherweight to sew the coins together for our group.

The finished top is shown below. One of our group members is going to do the quilting on her machine at home. We hope to have all of these quilts ready to donate to the hospital shortly.

One group had blue fabrics and used yellow for the sashings.

This quilt had black and white coins with black on black sashing.

Purple, green and yellow coins made this quilt quite cheery!

All of the groups (except my group) made their quilts using the quilt as you go method.

Smoothing everything out before adding the next row of coins...

I have been working on 10 more string blocks for my Roll Roll Cotton Boll quilt and finished them when I got home today. 16 done, 44 to go...

I went through all of my fabrics to find interesting neutrals/whites, creams and prints with light backgrounds...this strip has Hershey's kisses on it. (leftover from my husband's Valentine's Day gift--a pillow case.)

Jacqui gave me the pins fabric. I even pulled some strips out of my drawer of selvages...

The chicken fabric above came from the Quilts of the Netherlands show which was held recently in Ailsa Craig.

I hope to make another batch of string blocks this week as well as finish sewing the pink, green and brown blocks together. The next time Christine and I get together, we hope to get started on the red and neutral HST's--all 600 of them--Yikes!

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

I have lots to share tonight! I have been doing some sewing but have not had much time for blogging! This is a pillowcase I made for my daughter--she picked out the fabric when we were in Ottawa on Canada Day weekend. I just love making these pillowcases! Almost everyone in the family has them now--I gave my SIL hers this past weekend for her birthday along with the spinning 4-patch quilt that I have been working on recently. Actually, she received the quilt top for her birthday and I will have it quilted and bound for her for Christmas. You can see her pillowcase (blue with flowers and yellow band) and her quilt top here. She was thrilled with both gifts and now my neices are complaining because they don't have special pillowcases from their favourite (only!) aunt. (Don't tell them, but their pillowcases are made already--their birthday is in October --they are twins!)

Speaking of my neices, they were here for the weekend. We had lots of fun--we went to the market, baked a birthday cake for their mom, played games, went mini-golfing and out for ice cream. We went out to see this famous train engine who was visiting our town this past weekend:

We even did some sewing...we used my Go to cut out squares which we used to make this pattern on my design floor...

The girls sewed 5 rows of squares together and we will work on it again the next time they come to visit. This quilt will be donated to the Kids Quilts program at my quilt guild for a child in foster care. They have had some kids in their classes at school that were in foster care so they understand where the quilt is going. They had fun laying out all of the colourful squares to make the Trip Around the World pattern.

Just an update on Skye--he's getting bigger!

Last night, 4 quilting friends got together at Jacqui's for a QNIC. I just bought this Singer Featherweight machine and spent the evening trying it out. Jacqui and her husband collect old machines, refurbish them and sell many of them. I have had my heart set on buying a Featherweight for a while! I made 6 string blocks for my RRCB quilt with my new machine last night--it sews like a dream.

Only 54 more string blocks to make...my new machine is going to get a workout!

Jacqui worked on some 3-D blocks.

Karen machine blanket stitched around the petals of the flowers on this wall-hanging.

And, Chris worked on some spinning 4-patch blocks with a cowboy theme. this quilt will be a Christmas gift for her neice.

We have not had very many QNIC's lately and vowed to get together to sew again soon.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Christine and I got together last night to work on RRCB...both of us had our homework done! Christine is making a single bed quilt and I am making a queen size quilt so I have a lot more blocks to do than she does. We worked on sewing some of our blocks together with the pieces from Steps 2 and 4 that we finished last week. We are bouncing around the steps for this quilt--we did part of Step 7 last night.

Here are all my parts, ready to sew!

Here is my first block, ready to chain piece...

And here is Christine's first block...

I worked on several blocks at one time. The light fabric in the bottom left block has spools on it.

I finished 13 blocks to this stage--only 17 more to go! The green squares in the upper left corner of each block are for the borders on the blocks.

Here are some of Christine's blocks.

Our homework for the next couple of weeks...string blocks made from neutrals. I have lots of fun fabrics cut for my strings...stay tuned!

Saturday, July 9, 2011

I worked on my homework today. It was too hot outside to be out there which means it was excellent sewing weather!

I squared up my HST's for step 2 of RRCB and pressed them. (I still have to cut off those dog ears!)

I also sewed the neutral and green strips together for step 4, as you can see above. Tonight, while watching So You Think You Can Dance, recorded on my PVR earlier this week, I cut the 2" twosies out of the green and neutrals:

I just have to cut 30 2" red squares and trim those dog ears before Wednesday night. I should be able to manage this!

I took this picture of a lounging squirrel in my backyard this week.

Doesn't he look comfortable?

Today, we discovered that carpenter bees have been making their presence known in our backyard. We found 6 holes in various wooden structures in the backyard! A friend suggested we spray WD40 oil into the holes--this did the trick and we killed them. They are huge--about an inch long, and bore a very clean hole into the wood. They can destroy a wooden structure over time. We will be on the lookout for little piles of sawdust now--that's how I found the first hole this morning. Here is a picture of one that I found on the internet. Nasty!!!

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

I have been really busy lately so have not had much time to sew or blog. I promised that I would blog about Roll Roll Cotton Boll (mystery quilt pattern by Bonnie Hunter at Quiltville) in my last post. Christine and I have gotten together twice to work on this mystery quilt. We spent two evenings together so far and have got lots of cutting done and an little bit of sewing. Above, you can see our pink and brown HST's from step 2, cut out and ready to sew.

Our first homework was to get these sewn and both of us completed this part. However, we did not get them trimmed and pressed before our second get-together. This past Monday, Christine squared up her HST's and then both of us cut the strips and squares from green and neutral that we need for step 4. (Yes--we are doing the steps out of order so that we can complete the blocks first and then do the borders!) Christine brought her sewing machine to my house both times and neither one of us did any sewing!

Here are my green strips and squares--I got the neutrals cut as well but I don;t have a picture of them.

These are Christine's HST's being squared up.

We are getting together again next week to sew--no cutting this time. We have to get steps 2 and 4 completed before we meet again.

Happy Belated Canada Day to my Canadian readers and belated Happy 4th of July to the Americans! My family spent Canada Day in Ottawa this year where we saw a few people some of you might know...

We spent hours standing in the sun to see this handsome young man and his lovely wife.

We were packed in like sardines --no one dared leave to get food or go to the bathroom for fear of losing their spot! Kate did her walkabout on the other side so this is as close as we got to her. It was lots of fun to chat with the people around us as we waited--one lady had met both Prince Charles and Prince Philip and hoped to have a chance to shake Prince William's hand as well.

We also got up close and personal with the Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper... and David Johnston, the Governor General.

Those of you who know me and how short I am (5'1'') will be wondering how I got these pictures...There was a lady in front of us who had a chair that she sat on while she was waiting and she let me stand on it to take pictures during the walkabout! I had a great view of everyone!

The Snowbirds also did 2 flypasts in formation--they really travel fast and I just about missed getting a picture!

While we were in Ottawa, I did a bit of stash enhancement at two local quilting stores. The first store, "Quilty Pleasures", had a sale on any fabric with red in it--25% off--to celebrate Canada Day. I bought a few red fat quarters and some fabric to make my daughter another pillow case.

I also bought myself a new 6X12" ruler as I have lost mine and have not been able to find it. Now that I have a new one, the old one should show up!

"Mad About Patchwork" is an online store. I met the owner, Pam, at the recent Quilt Ontario show in London, Ontario. She told me to contact her when I was in Ottawa and I could go to her home to do some shopping in her basement. Lucky for me, she was home and I spent 45 minutes power shopping. I bought some black and white fabrics...

some solids...

And some prints...

There are no specific projects in mind for these fabrics--I just loved them enough to want to bring them home!

I will be at my sewing machine sometime in the next few days working on my RRCB homework so I will do a post when I have it done.